Spring Cleaning

May 25th, 2008 by Brack

Here’s some spring season anime first episodes I finally got around to watching:

Bus Gamer

With better animation this could be worth watching. It’s not terrible animation, but the bar for fighting anime is pretty high, and this doesn’t reach that bar.

Itazura na Kiss

Osamu Yamazaki’s adaptation of the late Kaoru Tada’s unfinished manga is a fun watch. Only the character design lets it down. It can’t quite bring itself to be as much as a throwback as the direction and story are. Good stuff and if I have time I will watch more.

Kanokon

A few weeks back I had the honour of being the subject of a thread on Gamefaqs’ boards, where the poster was ENRAGED(!) that I had been dismissive of this show (and To Love Ru) without watching it when I did my HATE FUN? rundown of the spring anime season. Hooray.

Anyway, this is rubbish, but well animated rubbish.

To Love Ru

Unlike XEBEC’s other series, which is badly made rubbish. It’s a 163rd photocopy of the Urusei Yatsura blueprint, that’s utterly forgettable.

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HATE FUN? - Uninformed Judgments on Spring Anime Part 10

March 19th, 2008 by Brack

Last one of these posts.

Junjou Romantica

Boys love TV anime based on Shungiku Nakamura’s manga. From the Higurashi director. I suspect this is one of those shows that will be much loved due to the fact there aren’t a lot (any?) out and out boys love anime shown on TV (rather than shows that tease it to let fans’ imaginations do the rest), rather than judged on it’s actual quality.

Itazura na Kiss

Osamu Yamazaki’s series for 2008 is an adaptation Kaoru Tada’s manga. Strange that ANN isn’t listing Minamimachi Bugyousho as animating, as I thought they were Yamazaki’s company and they did a great job with his adaptation of To Terra last year. Yamazaki’s a good director, so I think it all boils down to how hot the source material was.

—

And that’s your lot. There’s no doubt some series I’ve missed both deliberately (not written about any ‘net shows) and accidentally (I wrote all these posts a fortnight ago and there’s some shows that have surfaced out of nowhere since then).

My overall feeling is that there’s not a lot of shows that feel big and important based on talent alone - Kaiba is probably the only one. There also seems to be less truly objectional shows in this season too. I think we’re seeing the successes of the noitaminA slot and adaptations of “light novels” have a real influence on what is getting adapted.

So here’s a recap what I’m looking forward to catching in rough order of excitedness

Kaiba
Soul Eater
Golgo 13
Gag Manga Biyori
Chi’s Sweet Home

Allison & Lillia
Library War
Himitsu Top Secret
Chiko, Heiress of the Phantom Thief
Itazura na Kiss
Nabari no O
Macross Frontier
Real Drive
Zettai Karen Children
Masked Maid Guy
Kyouran Kazoku Nikki
Net Ghost PiPoPa

That seems a lot, but actually only those first five have me really fired up. I don’t expect to see GMB3 in English anytime soon, possibly not Chi’s Sweet Home either. However the manga is 80% understandable without Japanese knowledge so the anime may be even more so. Only Kaiba, Soul Eater and GMB3 have me excited based on the animation talent involved. However, I’m expecting those other 12 shows I’ve highlighted will contain gems.

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